Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Jeffrey L. Vagle was a Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His research interests include surveillance law, cryptography and cybersecurity law, electronic privacy, Internet architecture, and networked economies and societies. A particular focus of his work is the study of the societal, political, historical, and economic effects of government surveillance, especially among marginalized or disenfranchised populations. Mr.

Morgan N. Weiland is an attorney and PhD candidate at Stanford University specializing in speech, press, and technology law and ethics. She proposed, helped design, and is in the process of completing the first joint degree program between Stanford Law School, where she received her JD in 2015, and Stanford's Communication Department, where she is a PhD candidate. She is also a Graduate Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society. She is admitted to the California Bar.

Kate Westmoreland is a lawyer and policy advisor with over eight years experience advising government and the United Nations on law enforcement cooperation, cybercrime and human rights. She is an expert in the domestic and international aspects of international legal cooperation, having negotiated treaties on extradition and mutual legal assistance as well as advising the Australian Federal Government on cybercrime policy.

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In the lead-up to the FCC's historic vote in December 2017 to repeal all net neutrality protections, 22 million comments were filed to the agency.

But unfortunately, millions of those comments were fake. Some of the fake comment were part of sophisticated campaigns that filed fake comments using the names of real people - including journalists, Senators and dead people.

October is 'National Cybersecurity Awareness Month' in the United States. As many of you know, this already rather interdisciplinary field of 'cyber' has grown again over the past year or so --- now often encompassing issues like so-called 'fake news', disinformation, data analytics, and other current issues that further demonstrate some of the consequences resulting from the convergence of technology, adversaries, and society.

In a New York Times review of Edward Tenner’s book The Efficiency Paradox, Gal Beckerman observes that a key point is not simply to watch how much time we spend using technology, but to remember that “the tools we’ve invented to improve our lives are just that, tools, to be picked up and put down. We wield them.”

Which pretty succinctly states the main point of this entire series of blog posts: that human agency matters. Or, perhaps more directly, that while we all know human agency matters, we all too frequently overlook that point. This post (on Labor Day, 2018) thus asks what is the real value of human agency? By identifying value in it, I hope to set the stage for future posts on the urgency of fostering greater awareness of it.

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This week, the House will vote on H.R. 1644, introduced by Rep. Mike Doyle, which would reinstate the net neutrality protections of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order as of January 19, 2017. H.R. 1096, a competing measure introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, purports to restore the Open Internet Order’s rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, as well as the transparency rule.

Both bills have been touted as means to restore comprehensive net neutrality protections for all Americans.

In the leadup to the FCC's historic vote in December 2017 to repeal all net neutrality protections, 22 million comments were filed to the agency.

But unfortunately, millions of those comments were fake. Some of the fake comment were part of sophisticated campaigns that filed fake comments using the names of real people - including journalists, Senators and dead people.

Reconciling Copyright with Cumulative Creativity: The Third Paradigm examines the long history of creativity, from cave art to digital remix, in order to demonstrate a consistent disparity between the traditional cumulative mechanics of creativity and modern copyright policies.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

"Eshoo and her copanelists, Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, Reddit CEO Steven Huffman, and Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, remained doggedly optimistic about the future of net neutrality in the United States."

"Van Schewick argued that the motivation for removing net neutrality rules came largely from ISPs looking to capitalize on their positions as gatekeepers. She said that in 2013, prior to net neutrality regulations being put in place, six large ISPs started using “choke points” to slow down certain games and and videos, only speeding them up if the hosting websites were willing to pay.

“The ISPs have more money, and they definitely have more lobbyists,” Schewick said. “But that does not mean they get to win. They only win if we are silent.”"

"Thomas Lohninger, executive director of Epicenter Works, another NGO that ran an ostensibly grassroots campaign against the Copyright Directive, says his group worked with politicians from across the spectrum. “You can find allies in all political parties, and if you are working toward the majority, you also have to talk with all of the people and explore all avenues that you can in order to gain a majority. And that's what we did,” Lohninger says. “There are of course the Euroskeptics, that are fundamentally opposed to every type of European legislation or regulation.

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Stanford CIS brings together scholars, academics, legislators, students, programmers, security researchers, and scientists to study the interaction of new technologies and the law and to examine how the synergy between the two can either promote or harm public goods like free speech, innovation, privacy, public commons, diversity, and scientific inquiry

This year’s Security of Things Forum will feature two tracks: Leaders and Hackers that are intended to balance high-level talks and panel discussions focused on the operational and policy impacts of securing the Internet of Things with a variety of hands-on demonstrations, tutorials and granular “shop talks” on everything to IoT device hacking to protocols and platform as a service options, to securing IoT devices in enterprises and critical infrastructure settings.

Valarie Kaur, a civil rights lawyer, documentary filmmaker and interfaith leader, will deliver the commencement address during the 100th annual commencement ceremony at the College of Saint Benedict at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 9, in Clemens Field House on the CSB campus, St. Joseph, Minnesota.

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"Veronica B.: Look at it this way. Imagine Amazon started a larva farm too, and they could pay for faster internet speeds, get on an internet fast lane, and advertise to their customers in a way that Patrick or any startup bug business couldn’t. See the problem? Okay, the edible bug-growing business might not be a priority for Amazon at the moment, but did you think Amazon would ever buy a grocery chain until they bought wholefoods? 10 years ago, did you think Google would get into self-driving cars?

This week on CounterSpin: FCC chair Ajit Pai has announced his plans to gut net neutrality; the former Verizon lawyer and Jeff Sessions staffer declared his intentions at a private event in DC. So the victory activists fought for—having broadband recognized as a public utility like the telephone, and not some sort of corporate gift—is in jeopardy. What does this mean for all of us who rely on an open internet, and in particular for communities of color, for whom the web’s relatively even playing field is crucial for communication and organizing?

In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-efficient, relatively inexpensive, have autonomous controls. Its impact on urban and inter-city transport could reshape economies and families.